I always felt emergence was the direct consequence of interactions between components. Isolated nodes don't create any emergence; connected ones do. We are increasingly connected. I'm tempted to say interaction and emergence imply each other. No emergence without interaction, no interaction without emergence, at least in practice.
Hello Manlio, I recently wrote a short piece about the problem with reductionism in neuroscience and would be grateful for your thoughts (https://sajmalhi.substack.com/p/the-disappointment-of-neuroscience?r=2cl55d). I was wondering about the difference between chaos and complexity - would it be fair to say that chaotic patterns can occur with large numbers of independent units (e.g. grains of sand) whereas complexity occurs between interconnected units that can change each other's state / behaviour?
Chaos is sensitivity to initial conditions: small perturbation in the state of a chaotic system can lead to large, unpredictable, changes over short time scales.
Complexity is an umbrella term for several phenomena, including chaos. I agree that interactions and interdependence are the most basic ingredients of any complex system, which is the science of emergent phenomena: collective behavior, synchronization, phase transitions,...
I'm not sure I understand - if complexity includes chaos (i.e. chaos is a subset of complexity) then that would imply all chaotic phenomena are complex, which I don't think is correct?
Why? To have chaos in a continuous time it is sufficient to have 3 interacting components. However, not all systems are chaotic, of course: linear systems are not. And in fact they are not complex as well. Then, for nonlinear systems that depend on some parameters, not all parameters lead to chaos (and accordingly to complex behavior).
I see: you have read my term "including" in a strict sense, like if they were sets. This is not the case. Complex Systems can be chaotic, but not all of them are chaotic in the sense of sensitivity to initial conditions, which is a feature strictly of deterministic systems. The vast majority of Complex Systems have stochastic components (eg, distinct sources of noise), and are not chaotic.
I study communities/social systems, behavior, and power dynamics from a social science perspective (and struggle with the physics of at the detailed level) but I am thinking a lot about how humans interact with complex systems and in some cases, those systems prompt relaxation (for example, walking in a forest brings down blood pressure) and sometimes prompt anxiety (say, an office environment).
My hypothesis is that when the complex system is organized around simple fractals, it is calming to the human nervous system but when a complex system is organized around unique outcomes/outputs, it triggers anxiety and that this partially explains the friction experienced in large institutions and organizations. But I have no idea whether that observation based on my own experience with many organizations has any scientific/physical analog - but would love your perspective!
I think I know what you mean but would say it is difficult to compare the effect of a visual environment that repeats at different scales (e.g. forest) with a social environment that has unique demands (e.g. a large institution). However it is interesting to think whether fractals could somehow be calming!
I always felt emergence was the direct consequence of interactions between components. Isolated nodes don't create any emergence; connected ones do. We are increasingly connected. I'm tempted to say interaction and emergence imply each other. No emergence without interaction, no interaction without emergence, at least in practice.
terrific post, really inspiring
Many thanks!
Hello Manlio, I recently wrote a short piece about the problem with reductionism in neuroscience and would be grateful for your thoughts (https://sajmalhi.substack.com/p/the-disappointment-of-neuroscience?r=2cl55d). I was wondering about the difference between chaos and complexity - would it be fair to say that chaotic patterns can occur with large numbers of independent units (e.g. grains of sand) whereas complexity occurs between interconnected units that can change each other's state / behaviour?
Chaos is sensitivity to initial conditions: small perturbation in the state of a chaotic system can lead to large, unpredictable, changes over short time scales.
Complexity is an umbrella term for several phenomena, including chaos. I agree that interactions and interdependence are the most basic ingredients of any complex system, which is the science of emergent phenomena: collective behavior, synchronization, phase transitions,...
I'm not sure I understand - if complexity includes chaos (i.e. chaos is a subset of complexity) then that would imply all chaotic phenomena are complex, which I don't think is correct?
Why? To have chaos in a continuous time it is sufficient to have 3 interacting components. However, not all systems are chaotic, of course: linear systems are not. And in fact they are not complex as well. Then, for nonlinear systems that depend on some parameters, not all parameters lead to chaos (and accordingly to complex behavior).
I see: you have read my term "including" in a strict sense, like if they were sets. This is not the case. Complex Systems can be chaotic, but not all of them are chaotic in the sense of sensitivity to initial conditions, which is a feature strictly of deterministic systems. The vast majority of Complex Systems have stochastic components (eg, distinct sources of noise), and are not chaotic.
Ok, so there are 3 categories in this discussion - chaotic, complex, and chaotic + complex (like a Venn diagram).
I study communities/social systems, behavior, and power dynamics from a social science perspective (and struggle with the physics of at the detailed level) but I am thinking a lot about how humans interact with complex systems and in some cases, those systems prompt relaxation (for example, walking in a forest brings down blood pressure) and sometimes prompt anxiety (say, an office environment).
My hypothesis is that when the complex system is organized around simple fractals, it is calming to the human nervous system but when a complex system is organized around unique outcomes/outputs, it triggers anxiety and that this partially explains the friction experienced in large institutions and organizations. But I have no idea whether that observation based on my own experience with many organizations has any scientific/physical analog - but would love your perspective!
I don't fully grasp what you mean by "is organized around.."
I think I know what you mean but would say it is difficult to compare the effect of a visual environment that repeats at different scales (e.g. forest) with a social environment that has unique demands (e.g. a large institution). However it is interesting to think whether fractals could somehow be calming!